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Children of the Market Place by Edgar Lee Masters

E >> Edgar Lee Masters >> Children of the Market Place




We docked at Erie and at Cleveland, both small places. We came to
Detroit, the capital of Michigan. On the way some one pointed out the
scene of Perry's victory over the hated British. We passed into Lake
Huron.

Then later I was privileged to see Mackinac, an Indian trading post. I
viewed the smoking wigwams from the deck of the _Illinois_. Here were
the savages buying powder, blankets, and whisky. The squaws were selling
beaded shoes. The shore was wooded and high.... I looked below into the
crystalline depths of the water. I could see great fish swimming in the
transparent calms, which mirrored the clouds, the forests, and the boats
and canoes of the Indians.... We ran down to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Here
too there were Indian traders.... We went on to Milwaukee. As there was
no harbor here a small steamer came out to take us off. I went ashore
with some others. A creek flowed from the land to the lake. But the town
was nothing. Only a storehouse and a few wooden buildings. Soon we
proceeded to Chicago. I was told that the northern boundary of Illinois
had been pushed north, in order to give the state the southern shores of
the great lake, with the idea of capturing a part of the emigration and
trade of the East. This fact eventually influenced my life, and the
history of the nation, as will be seen.

Chicago had been a trading post, and to an extent was yet. The
population was less than 1000 people. There was a fort here, too, built
in place of one which had been destroyed in a massacre by the Indians.
There was much activity here, particularly in land speculation. Not a
half mile from the place where we landed there was a forest where some
Indians were camping. I heard that an Indian war was just over. The
Black Hawks had been defeated and driven off. But some friendly remnants
of other breeds were loitering about the town.

Carrying my valise, I began to look for a hotel for the night. Also, how
and when was I to get to Jacksonville? A man came by. I hailed him and
asked to be driven to a hotel. He walked with me north toward the river,
past the fort and landed me at a hostelry built partly of logs and
partly of frames. Surely this was not New York or Buffalo! As I came to
the hotel I saw a man standing at the door, holding the bridle bits of
an Indian pony. He came into the hotel soon, evidently after disposing
of his charge. At that moment I was asking Mr. Wentworth, the hotel
manager, how to get to Jacksonville. The man came forward and in the
kindest of voices interrupted to tell me what the manager evidently
could not. "I am going there myself to-morrow," he said. "You can ride
behind. The pony can carry both of us." I looked at my new-found friend.
He had deep blue eyes, a noble face, a musical and kindly voice. He
looked like the people I had known in England. I was drawn to him at
once in confidence and friendship. He went on to tell me later that he
had been in the Black Hawk War; that he had been spending some time in
Chicago trying to decide whether he would locate there or return to
Jacksonville. He had been offered forty acres of land about a mile south
of the river for the pony. But what good was the land? It was nothing
but sand and scrub oaks. Unless the town grew and made the land
valuable as building property, it would never be of value. For farming
it was worthless. But around Jacksonville the soil was incomparably
fertile and beautiful. He had decided, therefore, to return to
Jacksonville. His eyes deepened. "You see that I am attached to that
country." He smiled. "Yes, I must go back. Some one is waiting for me.
You are heartily welcome to ride behind." How long would it take? A
matter of five days. Meanwhile he had told me how to reach there
independently: by stage to a place 90 miles south on the Illinois River,
then by boat to a town on the river called Bath, then cross country to
Jacksonville. I began to balance the respective disadvantages. "My name
is Reverdy Clayton," he said, extending his hand in the most cordial
way. I could not resist him. "My name is James Miles," I returned with
some diffidence. "James Miles," he echoed. "James Miles ... there was a
man of that name in Jacksonville, poor fellow ... now gone." "Perhaps he
was my father ... did you know my father?" I felt a thrill go through
me. Was this new-found acquaintance before me a friend of my father's?
It turned out to be so. But why "poor fellow"?

Clayton was not over thirty-two, therefore my father's junior by some
years. How well had they known each other? We went to dinner together.
We were served with bacon and greens, strong coffee, apple pie. It was
all very rough and strange. But Clayton told me many things. He knew the
lawyer Brooks who had written me. Brooks was a reliable man. But when I
pressed Clayton for details about my father he grew strangely reticent.
I began to feel depressed, overcome by a foreboding of wonder.

After dinner we separated. Clayton had errands to do preparatory to
leaving and I went forth to see the town. What a spectacle of undulating
board sidewalks built over swales of sand, running from hillock to
hillock! What shacks used for stores, trading offices, marts for real
estate! Truly it was a place as if built in a night, relieved but little
by buildings of a more substantial sort.... Drinking saloons were
everywhere. I heard music and entered one of these resorts. There was a
barroom in front and a dancing room in the rear. The place was filled
with sailors, steamboat captains and pilots, traders, roisterers,
clerks, hackmen, and undescribed characters. Women mingled with the men
and drank with them. They dressed with conspicuous abandon, in loud
colors. Their faces were rouged. They ran in and out of the dance room
with escorts or without, stood at the bar for drinks, entwined their
arms with those of the men. In the dance room a band was playing. A man
with a tambourine added to the hilarity of the music. It was a wild
spectacle, unlike anything I had ever seen. No one accosted me. I could
feel a different spirit in the crowd from that I had seen on the boats
or in New York. There was no talk of politics, negroes, force bills.
They did not seem to know or to care about these things. It was a wild
assemblage, but without meanness or malice. They were occupied solely
with a spirit of carnival, of dancing, drinking, of talk about the
arrival of the _Illinois_; about the price of land and the great future
of Chicago. "It's as plain as day," said a man at the bar. "Here we are
at the foot of the lake. The trade comes our way. The steamboats come
here from the East. Look at the country! No such farm country in the
world! Why, in twenty years this town will have a population of 20,000
people. It's bound to." How could it be? How could such a locality ever
be the seat of a city? So far from the East. And nothing here but wastes
of sand!

I left the place unnoticed and returned to the hotel. I sat down
drearily enough. The feeling that I was far from home, far even from the
civilization and the charm of New York came over me with depressing
effect. I began to wish that Clayton would appear. I had not decided to
accept his kindly offer. I must be off to-morrow. The air seemed
oppressive. Was it so warm? I put my hand to my brow. It was hot.
Perhaps I was not well. The trip I had just ended was after all
wearisome. I had not slept well some nights. I sensed that I was
fatigued. What would a ride of more than 200 miles on a pony do to me?
But on the other hand I had the alternative of 90 miles by stage. For
the first time I began to feel apprehension about the days ahead.

While I was thinking these matters over Clayton came in. He supplemented
my doubts by telling me that if I was not used to riding, a journey of
such length would make me lame; at least a little. I then decided that
I would take the stage, and the boat. The next morning, promising to see
me in Jacksonville and offering to befriend me in any way he could,
Clayton bestrode his pony and was off. In an hour I was rolling in the
stage toward the Illinois River....




CHAPTER VI


We were some hours getting through the sand. Then we came to hilly
country overgrown with oaks and some pines. Later the soil was rocky. We
skirted along a little river; and here and there I had my first view of
the prairie. The air above me was thrilling with the song of spring
birds. I did not know what they were. Some of them resembled the English
skylark in the habit of singing and soaring. But the note was different.

My head felt heavy. I seemed to be growing more listless. But I could
not help but note the prairie: the limitless expanse of heavy grass,
here and there brightened by brilliant blossoms. All the houses along
the way were built of logs. The inhabitants were a large breed for the
most part, tall and angular, dressed sometimes in buckskin, coonskin
caps. Now and then I saw a hunter carrying a long rifle. The wild geese
were flying....

Some of the passengers were dressed in jeans; others in linsey-woolsey
dyed blue. As we stopped along the way I had an opportunity to study the
faces of the Illinoisians. Their jaws were thin, their eyes, deeply
sunk, had a far-away melancholy in them. They were swarthy. Their voices
were keyed to a drawl. They sprawled, were free and easy in their
movements. They told racy stories, laughed immoderately, chewed tobacco.
Some of the passengers were drinking whisky, which was procured anywhere
along the way, at taverns or stores. The stage rolled from side to side.
The driver kept cracking his whip, but without often touching the
horses, which kept an even pace hour after hour. We had to stop for
meals. But the heavy food turned my stomach. I could not relish the
cornbread, the bacon or ham, the heavy pie. When we reached La Salle,
where I was to get the boat, I found myself very fatigued, aching all
through my flesh and bones, and with a dreamy, heavy sensation about my
eyes.

The country had become more hilly. And now the bluffs along the Illinois
River rose with something of the majesty of the Palisades of the Hudson.
The river itself was not nearly so broad or noble, but it was not
without beauty.... More oblivious of my surroundings than I had been
before, I boarded _The Post Boy_, a stern wheeler, and in a few minutes
she blew the most musical of whistles and we were off....

The vision of hills and prairies around me harmonized with the dreamy
sensations that filled my heavy head and tired body. I sat on deck and
viewed it all. I did not go to the table. The very smell of the food
nauseated me. I do not remember how I got to bed, nor how long I was
there. I remember being brought to by a negro porter who told me that we
were approaching Bath where I was to get off. I heard him say to another
porter: "That boy is sure sick." And then a tall spare man came to me,
told me that he was taking the stage as I was, and was going almost to
Jacksonville, and that he would see me through. He helped me in the
stage and we started. I remember nothing further....

I became conscious of parti-colored ribbons fluttering from my body as
if blown by a rapid breeze from a central point of fixture in my breast.
Was it the life going out of me, or the life clinging to me in spite of
the airs of eternity? My eyes opened. I saw standing at the foot of the
bed, an octoroon about fourteen years of age. She was staring at me with
anxious and sympathetic eyes, in which there was also a light of terror.
I tried to lift my hands. I could not. I was unable to turn my body. I
was completely helpless. I looked about the room. It was small, papered
in a figure of blue. Two windows stared me in the face. "Where am I?" I
asked. "Yo's in Miss Spurgeon's house ... yo's in good hands." At that
moment Miss Spurgeon entered. She was slender, graceful. Her hair was
very black. Her eyes gray and hazel. Her nose delicate and exquisitely
shaped. She put her hand on my brow and in a voice which had a musical
quaver, she said: "I believe the fever has left you. Yes, it has. Would
you like something to eat?" I was famished and said: "Yes, something, if
you please." She went out, returning with some gruel. Turning to the
octoroon she said: "Will you feed him, Zoe?" And Zoe came to the chair
by the bed and fed me, for I could not lift a hand. Then I fell into a
refreshing sleep. I had been ill of typhoid. Had I contracted it from
the oysters, or from food on the steamer? But I had been saved. Miss
Spurgeon had refused to let the doctor bleed me. She believed that
careful nursing would suffice, and she had brought me through. But I had
a relapse. I was allowed to eat what I craved. I indulged my inordinate
hunger, and came nearer to death than with the fever itself. But from
this I rallied by the strength of my youth and a great vitality. All the
while Zoe and Miss Spurgeon watched over me with the most tender care.
And one day I came out of a sleep to find Reverdy Clayton by the bed.

A father could not have looked at me with more solicitude. His voice was
grave and tender. His eyes bright with sympathy. "You will soon be well
again," he said. He took my hand, sat down by me, cautioned me not to
worry about my business affairs, told me that nothing would happen
adverse to my interests while I was incapacitated, that Mr. Brooks was
guarding my affairs and that they were not in peril.... And it turned
out that Miss Spurgeon was his fiancee, that it was to her that he had
returned from Chicago. They were soon now to be married. I asked him if
Zoe was a slave. He laughed at this. "No one born in Illinois is a
slave," he said. "This is a free country. Zoe was born here."

Miss Spurgeon came in and I could now see them side by side. They seemed
so kind and noble hearted, so suited to each other. I loved both of
them.

I was stronger now, was sitting up part of each day. I reached out my
hands and took their hands, bringing them together in a significant
contact. Miss Spurgeon bent over me, placing a kiss upon my brow. "You
are a dear boy," she said. And Reverdy said: "The Lord keep you always,
son." Their eyes showed the tears, and as for me my cheeks were suddenly
wet. Then from what they said I learned that Reverdy had been gone many
months, that Sarah, for that was her name, had been in great anxiety,
that Reverdy had just got out of the service the morning I had seen him
in Chicago; and that he had speculated on staying there a while for the
purpose of improving his fortune with a view to his marriage. But now
having returned, they were to be married soon. What had been the delay
thus far? They were waiting for me to get well. I had interfered, no
doubt, with the wedding plans, with the arranging and ordering of the
house for the wedding. But they said they wished me to be present. Sarah
thought there was something well omened in my meeting with Reverdy in
Chicago, and in the fate that had brought me to her house, and she
wished to fulfill the happy auspices to the end by having me for the
chief guest at the wedding. But how had I come to this household?

The stranger who had helped me on the boat at Bath had turned me over to
a young man named Douglas who had brought me here, because of the poor
comforts at the inn of Jacksonville. Douglas had been here but a few
months himself, having come from the state of Vermont. He, too, had
been ill of the same disease; had been confined under wretched
circumstances at Cleveland on his way west; had nearly died. When he saw
me he was moved to do the very best for me. He had brought me to Miss
Spurgeon's and pleaded with her to take me in. And she had consented to
the ordeal of my care, because Zoe insisted upon it, offering to take
the burden of waiting upon me and watching over me. The Spurgeon house
was quite the best in this town of 1000 people. Sarah's father and
mother were both dead, and she was living here with a grandmother, a
woman now of more than eighty, whom I did not see until I began to go
about the house.... Meantime Zoe's face and manner became clearer to me
day by day. She was not very darkly hued, rather lighter than the Hindus
I had seen in England. Her hair was abundant and straight. Her lips were
full but shapely. Her nose rather of a Caucasian type. Her voice was the
most musical one could imagine. And she sang--she sang "Annie Laurie" at
times in a voice which thrilled me. There was grace in her carriage,
charm in her gestures and movements. And she waited upon me with the
affection of a sister.

As I grew better Mr. Brooks came to call upon me. And at last I went to
his office to talk over the matter of my father's estate. It was now
July and the heat was more terrible than I had ever conceived could
prevail outside of a tropical country.




CHAPTER VII


Sarah and Zoe followed me to the door the morning I went to see Mr.
Brooks. Cholera had descended upon the community and they begged me to
go to Mr. Brooks' office and return at once, and not to be in the sun
any more than was necessary. I had no fear. Having come from so serious
an illness I did not feel that another malady would attack me soon. As I
walked along I could see that the boundless prairie was around me. I
inhaled the spaciousness of the scene. I could see the deep woods which
stood beyond the rich prairies of tall and heavy grass. The town was
built roughly of hewn logs. It was like a camp of hastily constructed
shacks. But a college had already been founded. It had two buildings,
one of logs and one of brick. I looked back to see that the Spurgeon
house was substantially built, with care and taste.... Mr. Brooks'
office was in one of the log structures about the square. One entered it
from the street. I counted the signs of eleven lawyers on my way. The
tavern where I had stayed, except for Douglas and Miss Spurgeon, was a
most uninviting place.

Mr. Brooks sat behind a rude table. Back of him on a wall were a
portrait of Washington and a map of Illinois. On the table there was a
law book of some sort. Altogether there were three chairs in the room.
The floor was made of puncheon boards, and was bare. Flies buzzed in the
air and at the rude windows. I felt strong when I left the house. Now I
was not sure how long I should feel so. Mr. Brooks invited me to have a
seat; and after a few words about the heat and the cholera he began to
tell me stories of the people and the country. "Some years ago," he
said, "a man came to this country, I mean over around the river country
which you saw when you took the steamboat at Bath. He didn't have
anything, but he was ambitious to be rich. How could he do it? Well,
you can work and buy land with your savings, and land here under the
Homestead Act has been $1.25 an acre since 1820; still that may not put
you ahead very fast. And if you're ambitious you want to get rich quick.
That's the way every one here feels who is bent on getting rich. Money
is not as plentiful as land; and if land is only $1.25 an acre it takes
$800 to get a section. That's a lot of money to a man who has nothing.
This land around here is rich as the valley of the Nile. It is six feet
or more of black fertility. I'll bet that some say it will be worth $50
an acre."

I began to wonder why these Americans talk so much. I had observed it
everywhere. Here I was come on a matter of business, of my father's
estate; and the lawyer with whom I was forced to deal was talking to me
interminably of things that had nothing to do with it. But I was young
and strange, and not very strong; and it did not occur to me to show
impatience with him. And so he went on.

"This man was fine to look at, prepossessing and engaging. He looked
like a driver, a man of his word too. And one day when he was standing
on the street here he was approached by a stranger who began to get him
into conversation. You see, we don't have slavery here as a regular
thing. The negroes are sort o' apprenticed--free but apprenticed. But
under pretty severe laws, have to be registered, can't testify, and so
forth. This state is part of the Northwest Territory which was made free
by the old Confederate States in 1787; but we actually had an election
here eleven years ago to make it slave. And the people voted it free.
Anyhow we have negroes here; and the people are from Tennessee,
Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas where they do have slavery, and
we're all beginnin' to be scared over the agitation. Now this stranger
was a Southerner and any one could see he was; but of course didn't look
different from some of our own people. So this stranger began to talk to
this man and ask him if he was married, and he wasn't; and asked him if
he would like to make some money, which of course he did.

"And finally the stranger said that he had a daughter that he would like
to introduce, and asked this man to come with him a mile or so, and if
he liked the girl he would pay him to marry her. They started off and
found the girl. She was a mulatto or octoroon as they say, and as
pretty as a red wagon. You see the stranger was pure white and from New
Orleans; but the mother of the girl was a slave and they say kind of
coffee colored. And the upshot of it was that the stranger offered this
man $2500 to marry the octoroon. What he wanted to do was to place her
well. He didn't want her to run the chance of ever being a slave, as she
might be in the South. He was her father and he naturally had a father's
feeling for her, even if she was an octoroon. And this stranger said
that he had been around town and the country for some days looking at
prospective husbands and making some inquiry, and that he had found no
one to equal this man. The man liked the octoroon, the octoroon liked
the man. And they struck a bargain. The man got his $2500; he married
the girl on the spot. The stranger disappeared, and was never seen or
heard of again. It all happened right there. The man bought land, he got
rich. He was one of the best men I ever knew, and one of my best
friends. The octoroon died in childbirth, leaving a daughter still
living and in this town. The man died recently. His name was James
Miles. He was your father. And Zoe is your half-sister, and wants to
share in the estate, and that's why I sent for you."

The flies began a louder buzzing at the window. The heat had increased.
I looked through the open door and saw a man fall over, whether from
heat or cholera I could not tell. I was by now weary and faint. I said:
"I do not know what to say now. If we can agree, I mean if we are
allowed to agree, Zoe and I will have no trouble. I am getting faint.
And I shall come again." With that I arose and walked weakly from the
room.




CHAPTER VIII


What were my thoughts after all? Was I ashamed of my kinship with Zoe?
With this human being who had nursed me so tenderly through my illness?
Did I begrudge her the interest which she had, of right, with me in our
father's estate? She was as closely connected to him by ties of blood as
I was. These things I reflected upon as I felt course through me a deep
undercurrent of regret.

Was it my mother? Her face came before me as I had learned to know it
from her picture. Yes, that seemed to be it. My mother had not been
honored. How could my father for any ambition, for any exigency of
circumstance stoop to a marriage of this sort, with the memory of my
mother still fresh in mind, if not in heart? Ah! that was it! Did he
keep her in his heart? My grandmother's reticence about my father began
to fill in with significance of this sort. She knew that he had married
the octoroon not many years after my mother's death. She resented it and
she preserved silence about him, while keeping me ignorant. Thus without
any preparation for the disclosure, I had encountered it at full speed
in my career. Reverdy had, no doubt, alluded to this matter when he
spoke with such feeling of my father in Chicago. "Poor fellow," he had
said. Did my father suffer for this marriage? What was his secret? Why
"poor fellow?"

With these thoughts I entered the house. I could sense that they knew
that I should return with the secret which they had kept from me. Zoe
was not in sight. Sarah's grandmother sat in her chair by the window
and called me to her. "Come here, Jimmy," she said. "You're a nice
English boy. You know we are all English. My father and mother were
English ... well, to be truthful, my father was half Irish. His mother
was Irish. And that makes us all friends, no matter how much we fight. We
fight and get over it. My husband was in the Revolutionary War; and he's
dead and gone long ago; and here I am in this new country of Illinois
with Sarah and a son-in-law soon to be ... and maybe as lonely sometimes
as you are. Sarah's mother was my pride and she's dead a long time too,
but I don't get over that.... What's the matter, Jimmy? You've had bad
news. O, yes, it had to come. You know now about Zoe. Well, remember that
pretty is as pretty does. For that matter, she is pretty enough, and
good enough too. Change her skin and any boy would be proud to be her
brother. That's what a little color does. And yet the good Lord made us
all, white as well as black. I have always liked the colored people. I
liked them in Tennessee, and I hated to see them mistreated whenever
they were. But I'm like a lot of others, I don't know what we are going
to do with so many of them; and I say let the southern people run their
own business and not try to intermeddle in the business of the Almighty.
If He hadn't wanted slavery He could have prevented it. As for me, I
don't want no slaves. Every one to his own way. Reverdy's father came
down from Tennessee too. He emancipated all his slaves before coming. He
grew to hate slavery. He brought one old nigger woman with him to
Illinois. She's here yet, on a farm not more than fifteen miles away.
And Reverdy's father provided for her, and left a little fortune to
Reverdy ... more than $600, and that gives him a start."

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Various - "Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851"

Wm. Murray Graydon - "In Friendship's Guise"

T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley - "The Advance of Science in the Last Half Century"

Various - "Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884."